Tears of a Clown / Human
by Nimmy
Summary: The sequel to Visions in Blue! Finally, I wrote the first one a while back and I've just done the sequel. Maybe I'll do part three. Hehe. This one focuses on Duo and Heero.


Heeeeeere it is! The sequel to "Visions in Blue"! I gave this two titles, because really it has two sides. The story is about Heero and Duo, so see if you can guess which title is about whom!

((I know the title sounds like it's referring to Trowa since he worked in a circus, but the phrase doesn't really fit him. It's a figure of speech to symbolise someone who hides their worries behind a smile))

Not as long as the other one, but hell! Part three's in the works! ^v^;;;

****

Tears of a Clown / Human

"Geez, I'm so glad everything worked out for those guys..." Duo sighed in relief, sucking the last of his strawberry shake with a straw. "For Quatre especially... man, was that heavy going! I don't think I'd ever try something like that, whatever happened to me!"

Heero, sitting across from Duo at the little round table they occupied, merely stabbed at the surface of his shake with his straw and nodded.

Duo started to chew the straw. "Heh, I'll admit to you now, I would never have guessed that Trowa had such strong feelings for the little guy. Sure as a friend, but... well I think it's great. Quatre won't be so sad anymore!"

Heero nodded. "You finished now? Your shake, that is. I don't want mine. I'd say we leave those two alone for a while, we'll go back to my place."

Duo agreed, even though Heero never really gave him a choice. The Japanese boy was standing up and walking off before Duo could dispose of the carton his shake had inhabited. He kept the straw.

"Hey Heero, what are we gonna do at your place? Can we play charades? Geez, I'm so good at that!"

No response.

"...even though I do say so myself." Duo added, grinning.

"I've got a pack of cards." Heero said, not bothering to look at Duo. "I don't like charades."

"That's a shame..." Said Duo, his face dropping. "I haven't got any money with me, we'll have to play snap or something dumb like that..."

Heero shrugged. "I guess."

On the way, Duo insisted they stop at another cafe so he could buy a cappuccino. Heero reluctantly agreed.

-On the way home again- 

"I can't believe that guy threw coffee at me! The jerk!!"

Heero shook his head. Did the boy have no idea about how offensive his comments could be? He had accused an innocent man of trying to steal his wallet, when he in fact had picked it up after Duo had dropped it. He'd been trying to hand Duo the wallet when he laid into him with verbal abuse; the natural reaction would be to hurl your drink at him. Heero would have, anyway.

"You accused him of stealing your wallet." Heero said quietly.

"How was I to know he wasn't? All I saw was some guy with my wallet in his hands. It's amazing I didn't get serious burns, ya know!"

"It was cold coffee."

"Yeah, but even so! It could have been hot. And I don't think..."

Heero closed his eyes. Yak, yak, yak, the boy was ceaselessly talking. Couldn't he ever be serious for a moment? Quiet, even?

"Don't you ever shut up?" Heero asked in such an irritable tone that it surprised Duo enough to shut him up for a whole two seconds.

"Well!" He crowed, after he got over the shock of Heero showing a bit of emotion. 

Heero cut in quick enough to prevent Duo's expected barrage of verbal trash.

"Or serious? Why can't you ever be serious? Are you really that shallow?"

Duo was glowering at Heero, his eyes full of anger. "Shallow, huh? Well, you're hardly what you'd call deep! And you're so insensitive it drives me mad! You just sit there, cold and silent like a statue, like a- a- a robot! Why don't you just stop pretending to be human? And I have a feeling I've said this to you before, but it never sinks in. Most of the time you're not even listening!"

Heero was shaking his head. "You're just full of hot air. I can't understand a damn thing you say because it comes out of your mouth so fast it hasn't even formed into words. You have no depth at all."

Duo's face was crumpling rapidly. "Well maybe it's my way of dealing with things when my best friend just tried to kill himself and nearly succeeded!" He whispered harshly with tight lips. With that, he looked at Heero for a brief moment before running off. Heero noticed there had been tears in Duo's eyes.

Heero lowered his head. He hadn't thought of it like that... Duo's incessant rambling being a cover- a way to cope with things that were troubling him. He'd been like that during the war, during everything... brushing everything off and acting like nothing was wrong, joking around... it was all a mask.

Tears of a clown, some would say. 

"It's me that has no depth." Heero said quietly to himself after a moments thought. 

"I didn't see that you were hiding behind your laughter from your sadness."

Heero walked home. He wondered if he'd find Duo waiting there for him, wanting an apology. He'd give him his apology, because Heero realised he had been wrong. He didn't want to seem like a statue, like an emotionless robot, but he couldn't help it at the same time. It was the side-effect of the trauma in his life, just as Duo coped with his inner turmoil, this was how Heero coped with his. Disappearing inside himself...

But he felt, just like everybody else. He felt sad just like everybody else. 

He felt pain, too.

Although he wondered about the possibility of Duo being at his house when he arrived there, it didn't surprise him to find he wasn't. Maybe disappointed would be a better word, though he didn't give it much thought after that.

He went upstairs for a shower, his mind turning to Trowa and Quatre who were still probably at Duo's house. They had been so immersed in their tender embrace they hadn't noticed they'd had company, even when they had spoken out loud. But it was a good thing that Trowa had finally come to his senses. Heero had known Quatre's feelings for Trowa were reciprocated from the moment he'd first seen them together in the same room. They had something special between them, an unspoken and maybe unnoticed magic that bound them together inextricably. 

As he washed his hair, he wondered how Duo felt about the whole situation.

*

Duo sighed as he lay back on his bed wearily. Trowa and Quatre had still been there when he got back home, they were chatting happily on the sofa, all past incidents seemingly forgotten. They had each other now, and they could look forward to the future together.

Duo wondered what his future would be like. He had no soul mate like Quatre did, and the whole idea of the future seemed a violet misty haze.

He had been so shocked when he found Quatre lying on that bathroom floor... his first impulse had been to try to wake the boy, until he saw the half empty bottle of pills. Then he'd phoned an ambulance quick as a flash, the woman at the end of the line carefully instructing him in his panicked state what to do until the ambulance arrived. 

Run him under cold water... run him under cold water...

He hazily remembered laying Quatre out in the bath and spraying cold water from the flexible shower head into his face. He had no idea why you were supposed to do that, but it had done the trick. He had saved Quatre's life.

He remembered the tears falling down his face, his heart in his mouth as he watched the medics take him away in the ambulance- that was when he'd phoned Trowa.

He'd been angry at first, one of the many in a roller coaster of feelings he was to feel until he knew Quatre was gonna be okay. He left right after he'd ended the call and seen Heero walking up the path as he emerged from the front door.

Heero didn't know at that point what had happened to Quatre, so Duo had filled him in. It made him annoyed to see the lack of emotion on the Japanese boy's face, but he remained calm as Heero quietly relayed his short conversation between Trowa and himself, that he'd known Trowa's true feelings for a long time.

"Then why didn't you tell anyone about it?!" Duo had asked incredulously. 

"I didn't want to interfere." Had been Heero's simple reply.

Duo had left after the brief exchange for the hospital on his bike, and had been quite pleased to see Trowa there. He'd been delighted to see Quatre was ok.

Quatre had, thank God, made a full recovery by the day after next and was discharged.

Duo had been worried to leave Quatre alone, just as much the fact that he as still worried for his health as the possibility he might try something stupid again. So Quatre had come to stay with him for a while. 

But Quatre had seemed to have gained a solemn acceptance upon his release from hospital, he was just quiet.

Boy, had Duo been pleased to see Trowa standing at the doorstep.

And so there was a happy ending. But Duo had other things to think about, like Heero. He was still angry at him for the things he said. Why was he so insensitive?

His thoughts were interrupted by a slight blonde boy stepping into the room.

"Oh, I forgot to knock... I'm sorry!" Quatre said, smiling gently.

Duo grinned at him and sat up. "Hey, don' worry none. So where's that Trowa fella?"

"Right here." Trowa said in his quiet, unassuming way as he stepped into the room too. Duo watched as Quatre's eyes softened as he looked at the tall quiet one, boy was that love.

Trowa slipped his hand into Quatre's. "We're going out for a while. We'll be back soon. Do you mind?"

Duo grinned at him, waving his hand dismissively. "Mind? Course I don't mind. You guys gotta go catch up on things, and you can't do that without old bat ears here ruinin' the atmosphere! Go right ahead. Stay out till three. I don't mind."

Trowa lowered his head for a moment before looking at Quatre. Quatre nodded in understanding.

"I'll just get my coat, I'll be in the living room." He smiled at both of them before leaving the room.

Trowa stepped forward a little. "Duo. I have to thank you again for helping Quatre." The tall boy said quietly, his face meaningful as always.

Duo smiled. "Don't mention it. And I'm glad you finally saw sense."

Trowa smiled back, albeit much more faintly than Duo's grin, but it was a smile. "I have Heero to thank for that." He said.

Duo blinked. "Heero? What did he do?"

Trowa looked at his feet. "Heero was there at my house when you visited me, before... you know."

Duo's eyebrows raised somewhat. "He was?"

"Yes. He heard the conversation we had."

Duo frowned. "He never told me that. He told me that he knew you loved Quatre, though."

"He told me, too. He told me that while I was trying not to let anyone, myself included, get hurt- I was only hurting Quatre and myself by hiding what I felt. I once thought that it was better not to have love in the first place, but I realise now that it is better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all."

Duo's face was expressing quiet awe as Trowa told him this. 

"Heero... said these things..?"

"Yes. He brought me to my senses. So between you, you and Heero have done more for me in these past few days than I can thank you for. Now I know what it is like to have true friends." With a warm smile which Duo had never seen the likes of from Trowa, the tall boy walked from the door.

"Quatre, are you ready?"

"Yes, I've been ready for a while!"

"Then let's go."

"Ok! Bye Duo!" He heard Quatre call, then the click of the door being closed.

Duo smiled to himself. Well, this was all turning out very different to how he'd expected it. A smile from Trowa and romantic pearls of wisdom from Heero.

Heero... 

"Damn it, I gotta go apologise to him!" Duo leapt up from the bed and threw on his jacket before bolting out of the front door himself. 

He scooted past a surprised Trowa and Quatre as he sped up the street, yelling something incoherent to them as he went past.

"Where's he going in such a hurry?" Blinked Quatre in surprise.

Trowa smiled down at the small one. "To see Heero."

"Heero!" Duo thumped the door hard, calling out the boy's name. After a moment, he saw the familiar silhouette of Heero's spiky hairstyle approach the door, then it was open.

"Hn. You." Heero said flatly, disguising his gladness to see Duo after how their outing had ended today.

"Heero, I have to apologise... I'm really sorry I said those things to you-"

"Come in." Heero opened the door, cutting Duo off.

Duo noted with irony that the last time he was cut off with a "Come in" was when he was visiting a certain other taciturn brown-haired boy.

After Heero shut the door, Duo carried on.

"I really mean it though. I mean, the stuff I said I didn't even mean, and- hey, why's your head wet?"

"I just came out the shower."

"Oh. So yeah, what was I saying?" Duo scratched the back of his head briskly.

Heero looked at him. "Duo. Shut up for a minute, please. I want to apologise too."

Duo spluttered. "Whaaat?! You're apologising to me? Why? And how?" He asked.

Heero frowned at him. "Well if you don't want it-"

"Of course I do, I'll shut up now." Duo interjected.

"Right. Well come in, then. There's no point standing in the hall." He walked into the living room, Duo following. After both had sat down on respective chairs, Heero began.

"Duo, I'm apologising because I misjudged you. I realised today, after you ran off, that you're not shallow, you just hide your emotional side behind a mask. The mask is that part of you that is annoyingly loud and just won't shut the hell up. It's a cover. And though you really piss me off sometimes with that big mouth of yours, I realise that we all have to cope with our feelings somehow."

Duo smiled in spite of himself. "You call that an apology? Well, I s'pose it's the best I'm gonna get from _you_." He smiled at Heero. "Thanks, Heero."

Duo suddenly gasped. "That reminds me- Trowa says that it was you who talked him into confessing he loved Quatre! I never thought you had a mushy side, Heero! You're surprising me more and more these days." He grinned.

Heero grunted. "Hn. I was just telling him how it is. You shouldn't give advice unless you know it's right and also if it's right to impose yourself on someone else's business."

Duo was shaking his head and chuckling. "Well," He breathed. "Looks like you weren't pretending to be human after all... you really _are_."

~Owari~

Heh... And you thought they were gonna get together at the end, din'cha? Well, my furry friends- you must be patient. Strong bonds take time to build, especially with such damaged souls as Heero Yuy... 

Oh, all right, all right. They get it together in the sequel after this, okay? 

^v^;;;

hee hee. Review please.


End file.
